The Cosmological Argument

Overview

Recall questions on Aquinas's arguments from motion, causation and contingency, his rejection of an endless series, the principle of sufficient reason, the Kalam version, the objections of Hume and Kant, the brute fact reply and the fallacy of composition.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What kind of argument is this, and where does it begin?

   Model answer

   It is a posteriori and inductive. It begins from facts so general that almost nobody disputes them - that there is a universe, that things change, that things are caused, that things come into being and pass away - and argues that these facts need an explanation the universe cannot supply from within itself. Because the starting point is observation rather than definition, it cannot be dismissed simply by analysing the concept of God.

2. 2

   Explain Aquinas' arguments from motion and from efficient causation.

   Model answer

   In the first, Aquinas notes that things are changed from potentially being some way to actually being it, and that nothing can bring about that change in itself; the chain of movers currently sustaining the change cannot stretch back for ever, so there is a first mover, which he says is what people call God. The second runs the same shape for efficient causation: nothing brings itself into existence, an ordered series of such causes cannot be endless, so there is a first cause.

3. 3

   Set out Aquinas' Third Way and identify the step critics attack.

   Model answer

   He observes that the things around us come to be and cease to be, so none of them had to exist. If everything were like that, he argues, then there would have been a time when nothing existed, and since nothing comes from nothing there would be nothing now. As there is something, there must be a being whose existence is not merely possible. Critics attack the move from each thing being able to fail to exist at some time to there being one time when all of them fail together; that inference does not hold.

4. 4

   Why did Aquinas reject an endless series of causes, and what kind of series did he mean?

   Model answer

   He was not claiming that the universe cannot have an infinite past; he thought unaided reason could not settle that. His target is a series in which each member acts only because something else is acting on it at that moment - a hand moving a stick that moves a stone. Take away the first member of that sort of chain and nothing happens at all, however many links you add. An endless line of borrowers with no lender explains nothing.

5. 5

   What is the principle of sufficient reason, and how is it used here?

   Model answer

   It is the claim that for everything that exists, and every truth, there is a reason why it is so rather than otherwise. Leibniz applied it to the whole series of things in the world: even an endless chain of dependent beings contains no reason within itself for existing at all, so its reason must lie in a being that exists by its own nature. The argument therefore stands or falls with the principle - if some things simply have no explanation, it collapses at once.

6. 6

   Distinguish contingent and necessary existence.

   Model answer

   A contingent being happens to exist but might not have; it depends on other things and can be destroyed. A necessary being cannot fail to exist, and its existence is accounted for by what it is rather than by anything outside it. Defenders argue that a chain of contingent things requires a necessary terminus. Critics reply that necessity belongs to statements true by definition, not to things, so the phrase describes nothing coherent.

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